Maze Damaged During August 4 Storm

In the early morning hours of August 4, the Denton area was hit with a major storm — 80 mph winds and hail accompanied the rain and lightening.  The hail "layed" the corn down in portions of the maze and the wind "stripped" the corn.

Read the newspaper account of the storm HERE.

For those of you who have never seen stripped corn, all of the leaves were stripped down to just the center thicker stem part.  Most of the corn ears were left which makes the stalk top heavy.  54.428 acres of stripped corn looks pretty eerie but, we thought, "all the better for Halloween!"

We began to clear the 14.88 miles of trails.  It took 2 men and a mower from 5 am to 10 pm to initially mow the trail — how hard can it be?  So we got a dozen guys and they took all day to clear less than 5 miles of trails.

 

Then the wind came "sweeping down the plains." (Yep, that happens a lot in Nebraska, too.)  In one area, the corn is just too fragile to stand up to the wind.  We will have to close a couple sections of trail...they are just too dangerous to open to the public.  Someone could poke an eye out!

We estimate 2-4 miles of the 14.88 total will be closed. There's still plenty of trail to go through and the stripped corn really enhances the spookiness of the haunted maze!

 

As of September 24th, we have 12 acres of trail open.  Three trails are completely open.  The fourth trail is the only one effected, we did have to close some sections but, it is still a great trail!